Unattended Things
My heart missed its usual steps this morning
Dew drops were vanishing before
I could approach them with my unsure feet
And the rose petals fallen on the ground, perhaps late at night,
Looked so much like
What had been lying within me, unattended for some time,
My mind paced strangely this morning
The red and blue and even my favorite green of the rainy sky
changed colours I had not seen before
Earlier where there were words, there was only a patch
Of a confounding muttering silence
And all that was a void of some sort I knew almost well
Was now a ditch full of pinkish mud,
In place of clarity there was an uneasy compassion,
The neighbor’s cat that vexed me often
Was sitting in his balcony postured so meekly
That for once I thought it was such a sad way to be
Especially if it was drizzling and it was a Sunday morning
Sometimes this is how things are, even the mornings,
Or may be they look so
As this morning looked today
Or may be this is how I saw it showing itself to me
As some day those unattended things,
Lying within like the sad meek cats
Would show themselves
As they should be looked at.
Unbound
The wind was honing an idea
In a bird’s head
One that had just finished making its nest,
It had come to tell me too
That only time had produced me,
I was no one to think of my transcendence
Sadness that continuously drop within me from a tap,
Rusted and unstoppable
Is also an opening
To a creative melancholy.
By the end of the evening
The bird was well perched on its nest
Leaving me to wander
In the wide-open world
Unanchored
Unbound.
To Be With
I knew all the trees in the neighborhood
Those marked by the lovers,
Their names inscribed secretly on the trunks
And their leaves that shed tears for others
I knew innumerable squirrels jumping all over the place,
Birds that shared the lives of its silent inhabitants,
For there are legion: forlorn, courageous, handsome beings
Living without hope of ever witnessing a change
Curiously, I also knew when the rains would come,
When secret multicolored birds would flutter their wings
To alert the tactless and naive of rain water
Flooding their nests
Lately I have also come to know
That the prayers of the needy get entangled
With forces unknown in the lower zone of the stratosphere
Never reaching the highest ever,
And all good wishes for these people crumble
Before they surge from the hearts of well-wishers,
That way birds, squirrels and trees with tear-shedding leaves
Are still the best things for them to know
And to be with
Watching Sparrows Play
It was after a cold day
That the sun was out again
Heating my cheeks gently
As I sat in my study
People were out on the icy streets
Planning and plotting to conquer the day
Looking for the suitable love and hate
To sigh away some maturing pain within
It was after a cold day really
That the Saturday had come
When I spent my whole afternoon
Watching the mating of the birds
In the silence of a shadowy tree
Watching sparrows play and play
It was after a cold day
That the sun was out again.
